Ten Little Wizards: A Lord Darcy Novel by Michael Kurland, Randall Garrett Read Free Book Online

be vast indeed.
    So King Casimir IX, Sigismund’s son and heir, decided that Western discretion was the better part of Eastern valor, and cast his covetous gaze on the disorganized and fragmented Germanic states that formed a buffer between the Slavonic and Angevin Empires.
    While the Poles were expanding to the east, their Angevin majesties had paid little heed. The Imperial Territories of New England and New France on the far side of the Atlantic had taken most of their attention, and were allowing the Angevin Empire to expand as fast as it could responsibly administer its new land and new people. The Russian states, like the rest of Asia, seemed half a world away.
    But when the Poles turned their gaze west, they saw their way to the Mediterranean and to the North Sea both blocked by the Anglo-French Empire or its dependents. Not that the Germanic states were really dependent upon the Angevins for anything except stopping the Poles. In theory they owed fealty to the Angevin Emperor as part of the old Holy Roman Empire, but in actuality they had never paid a twelfth-bit of tribute to the Plantagenet kings, and never would. But they did know that, with the Angevin Empire on their west, they could tell King Casimir to go to hell; just as, with the Polish Empire on their east, they could remain as independent as they wished of Angevin influences. It was a balancing act they had become quite good at.
    And besides, the German states produced good fighters. Their men served as mercenaries in the Angevin Legion, as well as half the other armies around the world. If Bavaria and Hanover and Hesse and Prussia and all the other little German states could ever stop feuding and get together, the combination would be quite fierce. Nobody would purposely do anything that might encourage such a thing.
    But Casimir coveted clear water, which he could not reach. On land, the Germans stood in his way. At sea, the Baltic exit to the Atlantic was closed by the Scandinavian fleet, and the Slavonic navy’s exit from the Black Sea was closed at the Sea of Marmara by the Roumelian fleet, both backed up, if necessary by the Angevin Imperial Navy.
    Therefore, on land as on sea, King Casimir IX saw himself as ultimately blocked by the Plantagenets and their empire. His response was to create a powerful weapon and put it to work against the Angevins; a weapon which, he thought, would cause the undermining of an empire in the fullness of time. He might not live to see it, but his son Stanislaw, or certainly his grandson Sigismund, would.
    This weapon was the Serka . A contraction of an expression meaning, roughly, “the King’s right arm,” the Serka was the Polish Secret Police. Owing allegiance only to King Casimir, the highly-trained, highly-dedicated agents of Amt V, the Serka ’s External Division-West, were dedicated to the overthrow of the Plantagenet dynasty and the Angevin Empire.
    But against all of this, which seemed to indicate that agents of Casimir IX could well be plotting the death of John IV, there was the overriding question as to why they would do such a thing. The death of John would not bring the wheels of Anglo-French government to a halt. As able as John was, there were other Plantagenets available to take the throne. If Parliament thought either of John’s sons too young, or otherwise unsuitable, there was Duke Richard to act either as King or as Regent. And beyond him, in male and female branch, the Plantagenet tree had many suitable leaves.
    And, for any disruption that the death of John might accomplish, there was the counterweighing factor of the danger of discovery. If the death of a reigning Plantagenet could ever be brought directly to the door of the Polish king, it would mean immediate war; a war the Poles could not possibly win.
    “I don’t see it, Your Highness,” Lord Darcy said. “I’m not saying that the dying words of that thief were lies, but that there is either more to the plot that he was unaware of,